1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for inputting objects to a system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a device for organizing objects from a conveyor on a movable belt and further including a reject mechanism for rejecting objects moving along the conveyor that are too close to adjacent objects moving along the conveyor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In feeding systems such as those used in conjunction with grading equipment that classifies objects based on either weight or appearance (such as computer-vision systems), it has been necessary for the individual objects to be fed to the equipment in a single line with a certain minimum distance between adjacent objects to ensure an accurate classification of the objects and also to provide the ability to direct the object to a desired location after it has been classified. The objects usually have a random orientation when fed to the system, and may be spaced too closely to each other to permit them to be accurately place in the system.
Today, one manner of accomplishing this single-line infeeding is to have an operator manually feed the objects to a feeding system or directly to a grading system. Such manual infeeding is labor-intensive and correspondingly very expensive. It is also easy for an operator to be careless and deposit more than a single object at a time to a grading system, thus producing errors in correct grading of the objects. As a result, feeding speed is limited.